TESP News

The Accomplishments of TESP Group at 2018 Transportation Research Board 97th Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C.

Posted:1/4/2018

The University of Tennessee TESP faculties, staffs and students at Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, and Center for Transportation Research staffs
will present research papers at 2018 Transportation Research Board 97th Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. The presenters include
Dr. Asad Khattak, Dr. Chris Cherry, Dr. Candace Brakewood, and Dr. Lee Han, Dr. Stephen Richards, Dr. David B. Clarke, Dr. David Greene,
some staffs and graduate students.

Research papers covered bunches of research areas (connected vehicle, education, operation, public transportation, energy. etc) will be presented.
UT TESP faculties, staffs and students will present the following papers:

CTR Joins New National University Transportation Center

Posted: 3/20/2017

With Dr. Asad Khattak (CEE) as an associate director for the new center, CTR is a leading contributor to the Collaborative Sciences Center for Road Safety (CSCRS),
a new national university transportation center funded by the US Department of Transportation. Led by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Highway Safety Research Center,
the CSCRS unites leading programs in transportation research, planning, public health, data science, and engineering, with UNC, UT, Duke University, Florida Atlantic University,
and the University of California, Berkeley all taking part. The
Center for Transportation Research and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering will head UT's efforts at the new center.

UT, Center for Transportation Research Help Support Road Safety Center

Posted: 12/9/2016

UT will be a leading contributor to the Collaborative Sciences Center for Road Safety (CSCRS),
a new national university transportation center funded by the US Department of Transportation.

Led by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Highway Safety Research Center, the CSCRS unites leading programs in transportation research, planning, public health, data science,
and engineering, with UNC, UT, Duke University, Florida Atlantic University, and the University of California, Berkeley, all taking part.

"Our participation builds on both the department and the Tickle College of Engineering's history
of leadership in transportation safety, and extends it to the national level," said Chris Cox, head of
the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. "Our students and faculty will make significant
contributions toward decreasing the 38,000 fatalities that occur on US roadways each year."

Beaman Distinguished Professor Asad Khattak will serve as principal investigator on the project,
with Associate Professor Chris Cherry also playing a large role. Both researchers work with CTR along with
their primary roles in civil engineering.

"This consortium will lead efforts to meet transportation safety needs throughout the United States," said Khattak.
"We will examine behaviors that lead to high levels of crash and injury risks, the role of connected and automated vehicles
and integrated systems solutions for safety, extracting new knowledge from big data to improve safety, and understanding transportation workforce culture."

One hope for the center is that it can accelerate progress in reducing injuries and fatalities on the nation's
roads by offering a new model for understanding and addressing traffic safety issues.

By improving those issues, Khattak pointed out that the work of the center should also reduce the amount spent on
transportation safety, which accounts for almost $1 trillion per year in the United States.

First-year funding for the center will total $2.8 million, with up to $15 million in grant funding over five years available.
CSCRS is being set up to foster ideas that will allow the group to lead and influence the future of transportation safety research
for the nation by promoting collaboration, multidisciplinary research and education, and technology transfer activities.

"Transportation professionals are challenged to design systems that provide mobility benefits that limit risks," said Cherry.
"This new national research center will focus on safe systems that merge all aspects of transportation mobility, access, and
technology by breaking down some traditional silos that have limited gains in safety for all road users.

"Through this multidisciplinary center, we will move safety science and engineering research to a new level."

CTR director David Clarke said that the center will fully participate in all CSCRS activities.

"We will conduct safety research, develop new approaches to education and workforce development, and
communicate results to transportation professionals and practitioners at all levels," he said. "Our
objectives include educating a technology-savvy workforce that can provide innovative solutions to safety problems today and well into the future."

This grant funds one of five national centers that will be awarded under the University Transportation Centers
Program to advance research and education initiatives that address critical transportation challenges facing the nation.

"It's estimated there's a human factor or driver contribution to 90 percent of all crashes, but here, not only are we having
a driver component, but they seem to be situations where there's some behavior on the part of the driver or a law violation that is extreme.
"That certainly needs to be discussed and may be that we need to tighten up some of our standards on who can operate a school bus."

Another topic Richards discussed was the speed of the bus at the time of the accident.

In talking to WBIR, Richards mentioned that the black box on the bus will provide critical information, saying,
"one of the things the black box will indicate is what the speed was at the time of loss of control and during the sequence of the impact."

TheSoutheastern Transportation Center is a part of the Center for Transportation Research, which is housed in the Tickle College of Engineering at UT.

It was founded in 1994 to help improve highway safety and includes UT as the lead institution, along with The University of Alabama,
The University of Alabama-Birmingham, The University of Central Florida, The University of South Florida, The University of Kentucky,
North Carolina A and T State University, The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and Clemson University.

ITS World Congress Selected the UT team as Winners of the 2016 "Distinguished Scientific Paper - Americas" Award

Posted: 10/5/2016

Best Paper Awards at the Intelligent Transportation Systems World Congress (ITSWC) honors scholarly scientific papers submitted for review and presentation.
At a ceremony of the World Congress, a paper titled "Incident Duration Modeling: Estimation of Random Parameter and Quantile Regressions" authored by Behram Wali
(second year PhD student), Dr. Asad J Khattak (Beaman Distinguished Professor), and Dr. Jun Liu (Former Post-Doc and UT alum) was selected as to receive the
"Distinguished Scientific Paper - Americas" award. It will be given by the 2016 Intelligent Transport Systems World Congress in Melbourne, Australia.
This award recognizes the outstanding research conducted by the Transportation Engineering and Science Program at UT.

Funded by the United States Department of Transportation through the Southeastern Transportation Center, the research within the paper shows that,
in transportation, traffic incidents that have substantially larger durations can be better predicted with new methods. Moreover, the study helps with
providing the motoring public with accurate quantitative information about expected durations when large-scale incidents occur and potentially reducing
the delays and frustration often associated with large-scale incidents. Their study has significant implications for incident management.

The World Congress is the premier intelligent transport systems global event promoting development and deployment of advanced technologies by providing an
international platform to showcase rapid ITS engineering and development capabilities. The congress provides a leading opportunity for industry, academia, subject
matter experts, students, and other interested stakeholders to come together and understand the innovations before us in the mid to long term.

"It's a great pleasure to receive such an important award, and I am very grateful to the ITS Congress Program Committee for their vote of confidence in our work,"
said Wali. "Given the international reputation of the World Congress, I am humbled by the recognition. I am very sure that every nominee from the Americas region was
as capable and deserving of this distinguished paper award."

Dr. Khattak Featured As Spotlight Session Chair & Plenary Session Speaker in 16th International Conference of Transportation Professionals (CICTP) Held In Shanghai, China.

Posted: 8/23/2016

Dr. Asad Khattak, Beaman Distinguished Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering at The University of Tennessee was featured as a
plenary session speaker in 16th International Conference of Transportation Professionals (CICTP) held during July 6-9, 2016, in Shanghai,
China, jointly organized by Chinese Overseas Transportation Association (COTA) and Shanghai Maritime University (SMU). The CICTP annual meetings,
established by COTA and sponsored by American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and Transportation Research Board (TRB), is a premier gathering of
world-renowned researchers in transportation science and logistics, interested in contributing to or gaining a profound understanding of transportation
development globally.

Abstract of presentation at the 16th CICTP conference in Shanghai, China, 2016. -
Innovative connected and automated vehicle solutions can potentially address major societal problems of safety, mobility,
energy, and air quality. This National Science Foundation (NSF) and US Department of Transportation funded study explores
the role of wireless connectivity and how information from vehicle and transportation system infrastructure based sensors
can be integrated, processed, and disseminated. A technical challenge is enabling drivers and/or autonomous vehicles to take
advantage of new and intelligent technologies, and estimate how they will respond to new forms of information, and how feedback
(early warnings and control assistance) can help improve performance. Especially important in this context is driving volatility,
characterized by hard accelerations/braking, jerky movements, sharp lane changes or turns, and abnormally high speeds. Can these
be mapped to a combination of surrounding and proximate traffic states of vehicles? Are they related to how surrounding vehicles
behave and are they related to socio-demographics/aggressiveness of drivers? These questions will be answered by using behavioral
data and a framework that anticipates instantaneous driver maneuver decisions at different levels of vehicle control.

The Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems edited by Dr. Khattak Forges Ahead in International Ranking

Posted: 8/23/2016

Dr. Asad Khattak is the Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems (JITS). Once again, the editors of JITS are
pleased to announce that the JITS 2-year impact factor has increased to 1.565 for 2015, which places JITS as one of the highly ranked
journals in growing field of intelligent transportation systems. In addition, the journal's SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) has increased
to 1.774 in 2015. Among transportation science and technology journals, it is now ranked 13th out of 32, based on 2016 Thompson Reuters,
Journal Citation Reports. This achievement was made possible with the in valuable contributions of the editors, authors, and reviewers.

Additional journal metrics available for JITS from the journalmetrics.com website include:

SCImago Journal Rank (SJR): 1.774 (SCImago Journal rank is a prestige metric based on the idea that not all citations are the same.")

Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) of 1.604 ("Source Normalized Impact per Paper measures contextual citation impact by weighting citations based on the total number of citations in a subject field.")

Impact per Publication (IPP) of 1.436 ("Impact per Publication measures the ratio of citations per article published in the journal.")

The editors and Taylor & Francis staff are very pleased with the journal's performance. As an indication of solid growth,
JITS publication frequency will increase 4 to 6 issues per year in 2016. Staff are working to further increase the visibility
and awareness of JITS by posting free links to the top cited and top-downloaded articles. Note that high impact factors increase
the visibility and awareness of journals, driving up usage and journal distribution.

Dr. Asad Khattak, Beaman Distinguished Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering at The University of Tennessee gave an invited talk in the
Transportation Speaker Series by National Center for Transportation Systems Productivity and Management (NCTSPM) at Georgia Institute of Technology on March 3, 2016.
His lecture is titled "The Role of Connected and Automated Vehicles: How Can Urban Areas Use the Data They Create?"

With increasing attention focused on connected and automated vehicles, Dr. Khattak discussed the opportunities and challenges for their development
and deployment. How can they transform various processes in the transportation system, especially through the data they generate? Will they have a profound
impact on mobility, safety and the environment? The talk focused on presenting a framework for analysis and demonstrated the use of modeling and simulation
techniques. The research work undertaken in a National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsored study (# 1538139) on how higher driving volatility, e.g.,
hard accelerations or hard braking relates to mobility, safety and the environment was discussed. The presentation also discussed the implications of
the NSF sponsored study for travel behavior changes, future vehicle use, and transportation system performance.

UT Receives Transportation Focused Grant from the National Science Foundation

Posted:10/1/2015

An interdisciplinary team of faculty members at the University of Tennessee has been awarded a $399,793 grant by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The team comprising of Drs. Asad Khattak, Subhadeep Chakraborty, and Shashi Nambisan was selected by NSF's Division of Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation for their research proposal titled "Study of Driving Volatility in Connected and Cooperative Vehicle Systems."

Recent technological advances enable vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications. These technologies allow wireless exchange of critical safety and operational data between and among vehicles and infrastructure system elements. These include location, heading, speed, and acceleration data attributes. The research aims to study the role of wireless connectivity and how information from modern sensors can be integrated, processed, and disseminated to offer innovative solutions to address major societal challenges related to safety, mobility, energy, and emissions. The proposed activities are important to advancing knowledge and understanding in areas such as travel behavior, control systems, information technology, and complex transportation systems. The research will integrate educational and outreach activities, and will also provide interdisciplinary training to students, with special efforts made to recruit minority students through UT's Engineering Diversity Program.

"This grant signifies the leadership role of UT faculty in the emerging field of connected and autonomous vehicles, especially in terms of intellectual merit of the driving volatility concept and the broader social and economic impacts that such technologies are likely to have," said Khattak, who is a Beaman Professor in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering (CEE) at UT and Transportation Program Coordinator in the department. He is affiliated with the UT Center for Transportation Research (CTR), where he works on research and educational projects related to the Southeastern Transportation Center (STC) and NURail University Transportation Center. He is also editor of the Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems.

Dr. Subhadeep Chakraborty is an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Biomedical Engineering (MABE) at UT. He received his PhD in mechanical engineering and a dual MS in mechanical and electrical engineering from the Pennsylvania State University. His research focuses on control and analysis of spatially distributed dynamical systems. Specifically his research on evolution of socio-cultural behavioral dynamics in locally connected networks has resulted in several interesting findings related to connected vehicles.

Dr. Shashi Nambisan, PE, is a professor of civil engineering at UT as well as education director of the STC at CTR. With more than twenty-six years of experience in transportation, he has led over 160 projects on a range of multi-disciplinary topics related to transportation and infrastructure systems planning, operations, management, safety, data enabled decision support, and workforce development. Among the awards and honors received by Nambisan is a proclamation by the Governor of the state of Nevada designating January 31, 2007, as the "Professor Shashi Nambisan Day" to recognize his leadership and contributions to enhancing transportation safety.

18 research papers covered bunches of research areas (work zone safety, connected vehicle, education, operation, public transportation, energy. etc) will be presented. UT TESP faculties, staffs and students will present the following papers:

What Role do Pre-crash Driver Actions Play in Work Zone Crashes? Application of Hierarchical Models to Crash Data - 16-1587

Reuters reports the study on U.S. fuel economy conducted by TESP personnel

Posted:10/2/2015

Reuters reports a study conducted by TESP people that include Dr. Greene David, Dr. Asad Khattak, Dr. Jun Liu and Dr. Xin Wang (a previous TESP research associate). The study investigates the shortfalls between on-road fuel economy estimates and regulatory fuel economy values by laboratory tests. The full report of this study has been released by Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy at University of Tennesse, (for the report, please click here).

UT Receives Transportation Focused Grant from the National Science Foundation

Posted:10/1/2015

An interdisciplinary team of faculty members at the University of Tennessee has been awarded a $399,793 grant by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The team comprising of Drs. Asad Khattak, Subhadeep Chakraborty, and Shashi Nambisan was selected by NSF's Division of Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation for their research proposal titled "Study of Driving Volatility in Connected and Cooperative Vehicle Systems."

Recent technological advances enable vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications. These technologies allow wireless exchange of critical safety and operational data between and among vehicles and infrastructure system elements. These include location, heading, speed, and acceleration data attributes. The research aims to study the role of wireless connectivity and how information from modern sensors can be integrated, processed, and disseminated to offer innovative solutions to address major societal challenges related to safety, mobility, energy, and emissions. The proposed activities are important to advancing knowledge and understanding in areas such as travel behavior, control systems, information technology, and complex transportation systems. The research will integrate educational and outreach activities, and will also provide interdisciplinary training to students, with special efforts made to recruit minority students through UT's Engineering Diversity Program.

"This grant signifies the leadership role of UT faculty in the emerging field of connected and autonomous vehicles, especially in terms of intellectual merit of the driving volatility concept and the broader social and economic impacts that such technologies are likely to have," said Khattak, who is a Beaman Professor in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering (CEE) at UT and Transportation Program Coordinator in the department. He is affiliated with the UT Center for Transportation Research (CTR), where he works on research and educational projects related to the Southeastern Transportation Center (STC) and NURail University Transportation Center. He is also editor of the Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems.

Dr. Subhadeep Chakraborty is an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Biomedical Engineering (MABE) at UT. He received his PhD in mechanical engineering and a dual MS in mechanical and electrical engineering from the Pennsylvania State University. His research focuses on control and analysis of spatially distributed dynamical systems. Specifically his research on evolution of socio-cultural behavioral dynamics in locally connected networks has resulted in several interesting findings related to connected vehicles.

Dr. Shashi Nambisan, PE, is a professor of civil engineering at UT as well as education director of the STC at CTR. With more than twenty-six years of experience in transportation, he has led over 160 projects on a range of multi-disciplinary topics related to transportation and infrastructure systems planning, operations, management, safety, data enabled decision support, and workforce development. Among the awards and honors received by Nambisan is a proclamation by the Governor of the state of Nevada designating January 31, 2007, as the "Professor Shashi Nambisan Day" to recognize his leadership and contributions to enhancing transportation safety.

Dr. David Greene, a Senior Baker Fellow in Energy and Environment, has released a new study that indicates that the gap between government fuel economy estimates and what consumers are reporting has increased for recent model year vehicles.

"There has always been a known gap between the test ratings and what people get in the real world, which historically has been about a 15 percent difference," said David Greene, one of the authors of the study and senior fellow in the Energy and Environmental Policy program at UT's Baker Center. "But one of the key findings in our study is that we found this difference has recently increased to about 20 percent. An increase of this size was anticipated by the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Transportation when they set the new fuel economy standards. The real issue is to be sure the gap doesn't continue to grow."

The fuel economy tests are used for two purposes: to determine if manufacturers are in compliance with federal fuel economy and greenhouse gas emission standards, and to inform the public about the fuel economy of the vehicles they buy.

With respect to consumer information, Greene says there have always been differences between what people get on average and what number is reflected on the label of a new car.

But the study found tremendous variability from driver to driver. Because of that, the label value is not a good predictor of what individuals will actually get, which makes the information less useful to consumers.

Researchers analyzed approximately 75,000 individual fuel economy estimates from the Department of Energy's website(http://www.fueleconomy.gov). Visitors to the website have been submitting their own fuel economy estimates since 2005. The records cover all model years from 1984 to 2015 and all states in the U.S.

"This is a unique resource for understanding how fuel economy estimates used to enforce corporate average fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions standards relate to real-world outcomes," said Greene.

Greene said technology exists to give drivers more accurate data that correlates with their driving habits and travel routines.

"For years, people have assumed that the problem with the government's fuel economy estimates was that they were too high, on average," said Greene. "But according to the data, the EPA miles-per-gallon numbers do a pretty good job of predicting what the average driver will get. The problem is that very few of us are average. For a car rated 25 miles per gallon, we can be 95 percent sure that the on-road fuel economy any individual driver actually gets will be somewhere between 15 and 35. Consumers need better information than that, and modern information technology may make that possible."

The findings show that the shortfall between test cycle fuel economy estimates and in-use fuel economy estimates has been increasing since 2005.

According to Greene, the gap should be closely monitored and, if it continues to grow, test procedures or regulations should be adapted to better reflect real-world conditions.

"Manufacturers will spend billions of dollars each year to meet federal fuel economy and emissions standards," said Greene. "The standards are designed to save consumers several times that in reduced fuel costs. Making sure the standards are working as intended requires knowing what drivers really get on the road. Now it's more important than ever that we watch this closely to make sure the gap doesn't get any bigger."

July 3, 2015. The editors of the Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems (JITS) are pleased to announce that the JITS impact factor is 1.377 for 2014 and the 5-year impact factor is 1.514. Once again, this places JITS as one of the highly ranked journals in the field of intelligent transportation systems. Among transportation science and technology journals, it is ranked 17th out of 32, based on 2014 Thomson Reuters, Journal Citation Reports. This result was made possible with the valuable contributions of the editors, authors, and reviewers!

Additional journal metrics available for JITS from the journalmetrics.com website include:

Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) of 1.227 ("Source Normalized Impact per Paper measures contextual citation impact by weighting citations based on the total number of citations in a subject field."

Impact per Publication (IPP) of 1.222 ("Impact per Publication measures the ratio of citations per article published in the journal")

SCImago Journal Rank (SJR): 0.650 ("SCImago Journal Rank is a prestige metric based on the idea that not all citations are the same."

SCImago also lists the journal in the top quartile for engineering and computer science categories. The editors and Taylor & Francis staff are very pleased with the journal's performance. They are working to further increase the visibility and awareness of JITS. Note that high impact factors increase the visibility and awareness of journals, driving up usage and journal distribution. All papers appearing in JITS are available online at:
Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems

Dr. Nambisan had a talk with John "Jimmy" Duncan Jr., the U.S. Representative from Tennessee's 2nd District

COE Faculty Paper Honored at Conference

Posted:3/1/2015

Transportation Systems STEM Summer Academy for Teachers - A paper by Dr. Shashi Nambisan, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Dr. Jennifer Richards, Department of Food Science and Technology - was selected as the best paper in the STEM and Community Engagement section at the Engineering Leaders for Grand Challenges conference held in November 2014 at Texas A&M University at Qatar. The paper summarized efforts related to and outcomes from the development and implementation of a three day, transportation-systems-based summer academy for teachers.

TESP faculty and students attended the 94th TRB Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C.

Posted:2/9/2015

University of Tennessee Civil and Environmental Engineering faculty and students, together with Center for Transportation
Research (CTR) staff presented research papers at the 2015 TRB Annual Meeting.

UT participated in the 94th Annual Transportation Research Board (TRB) held in January in Washington,
D.C. The presenters included Dr. Lee Han, Dr. Asad Khattak, Dr. Chris Cherry, Dr. Shashi Nambisan, Dr. Baoshan Huang, Dr.Stephen Richards, Dr. David B. Clarke and several graduate students. TESP faculty, staff and students will present over 20
research papers/posters, reflecting collaborations between various UT entities and other universities.

The TRB Annual Meeting covers all transportation modes, with thousands of presentations on a diverse
set of transportation topics. The TRB 94th Annual Meeting attracted upward of 11,000 transportation professionals from
around the world to Washington, D.C., in January,
2015 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center. UT's Dr. Khattak co-presided a research meeting - Impacts of New Data and Information Technologies on Transforming Traveler Experience. Dr. Chris Cherry chaired in Emerging Vehicles for Low Speed Transportation Joint Subcommittee of ANF20, ANF10, ANB40 and ANF30, and presided a poster session titled "Bicycle Transportation, Part I: Behavior and Policy. Dr. Shashi Nambisan chaired a TRB standing committee - National Transportation Data Requirements and Programs Committee. This year, Southeastern Transportation Center hosted the STC Student "Spotlight" Event, which included 3-minute Thesis/Dissertation/Project Presentations and Recognition of Individual Student Accomplishments by University and Recognition of STC Outstanding Student.

UT TESP faculty, staff, and students presented the following papers and posters on a broad set of transportation planning and operations issues (list of selected presentations):

Dr. Chris Cherry Presented E-bike Research at Stanford University and Will Give a Talk at 11th TPMDC in Inida

Posted:12/5/2014

Dr. Chris Cherry, associate professor of TESP presented E-bike research at Stanford University on December 5, 2014. His presentation is titled "Electric powered two-wheelers: a game-changer in Asia and beyond?"

Low speed electric two wheelers (e.g. E-bikes) have seen dramatic market growth in China. With about 150m sold in the last decade, they are the largest and most rapid adoption of an alternative fuel vehicle in the history of motorization. They have disrupted traditional transportation pathways and provided efficient mobility solutions that are low-cost, emit little pollution, and displace more harmful motorized modes. However, it is difficult to assess their impact in an already rapidly-changing transportation landscape. This seminar will discuss the results of some of the research Dr. Cherry has conducted on the role of electric powered two-wheelers in China's transportation system, focusing on sustainability and safety. He will also discuss how e-bikes and their derivatives can influence more sustainable transportation in the west. Last, he will highlight some of the emerging research areas of this vehicle technology and some initiatives to pursue these research areas.

Dr. Cherry will also give a related talk at the conference on Transportation Planning and Implementation Methodologies for Developing Countries (TPMDC) in India. The conference is being organized by the Transportation Systems Engineering (TSE) group at Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. IIT Bombay is one of the top technical institutes in the world, established in 1958 by the Government of India. The TSE Group started in 1988 has currently grown to eight faculty members and more than thirty graduate students. It is known for its cutting edge research and involvement in major transportation studies in India. Starting from the year 1996, the group has been conducting international workshops on TPMDC, biannually.

TESP Professor and Student Gave a Talk at 2014 ITS World Congress in Detroit, MI

Posted:10/20/2014

Dr. Asad Khattak, Beaman Professor of TESP and Jun Liu, a forth-year TESP Ph.D student, gave a talk on "Generating Real-time Driving Volatility Information to Support Instantaneous Driving Decisions" at 2014 ITS World Congress held on September 7-11, 2014 in Detroit, Michigan.

UT Helps Effort to Take Some of the Hazard out of HazMat Transportation

Posted:10/20/2014

Vehicles carrying hazardous materials are a part of everyday traffic in the modern world, with 1.2 million shipments a day in the United States alone. Most drivers aren't aware of this-until something goes awry.

When a crash occurs, there can be shockingly little information available to first responders as they assess the situation, and that can lead to evacuations, closures, and even injuries to both emergency personnel and the public at large.

That could soon change, thanks to a breakthrough being developed in conjunction with UT's Southeastern Transportation Center.

......

"This is a big step forward in terms of being able to track these materials," said Stephen Richards, director of the STC. "At the same time, giving authorities the information they need in a far speedier manner is a vital part of this as well."

......

"It was a great opportunity for us all to get together and share some of our ideas and our thoughts and concerns," said Professor Shashi Nambisan of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, the faculty member leading the e-HM initiative at UT.

"This project is one that could have wide-ranging implications for years to come, so bringing together people that it will affect the most was critically important to developing an e-HM system that is based on broad stakeholder engagement."

The STC began its current mission of promoting transportation safety through research and education in 1994 as part of the Center for Transportation Research in the College of Engineering.

Dr. Shashi Nambisan Through the Center for Transportation Awarded $1.2 Million for Traffic Safety Project by CDC

Posted:10/8/2014

UT's team-led by Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Shashi Nambisan and CTR Transportation Research Director Jerry Everett-won, and is now being supported by the CDC with a $1.2 million grant paid over three years.

"This project brings together researchers, practitioners and the public in a collaborative fashion to address a real-world transportation issue," said David Clarke, CTR director. "Highway traffic safety is a key aspect of our center's mission, and we can achieve that better by getting everyone on the same page."

Although it might seem strange for the CDC to get involved with a transportation issue, the agency is tasked with public health and safety regardless of the cause.

Nambisan pointed out that, on average, the number of people killed in traffic incidents each day in the United States is roughly the same as having an airliner crash every day.

Jun Liu Wins the 2014-15 William L. Moore Jr. TSITE Scholarship

Posted:8/30/2014

Jun Liu, a PhD candidate in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE), has become the 2014-2015 winner of the Tennessee Section of Institute of Transportation Engineers (TSITE) scholarship, named after William L. Moore, Jr.The award banquet ceremony was held during the 2014 TSITE Summer Meeting at the Park Vista Hotel in Gatlinburg, TN.

"My advisor, Dr. Asad Khattak, is the one I really owe a lot of thanks to," said Liu. "Professor Khattak cares about students, both in terms of their educational achievement and personal well-being. Without his support and encouragement, my chances of winning this award would be greatly diminished. I would also like to thank Dr. Stephen Richards and Dr. Lee Han, who provided input and support."

"Jun is well on his way to becoming a scholar who will be contributing to the transportation field and professional practice for a long time to come," said Khattak, Beaman Professor in CEE. "This award is very befitting and it recognizes Jun Liu's potential."

Liu works with the federally-funded Southeastern Transportation Center and deals with using Big Data for transportation safety. This is one of STC's Major Research Initiatives intended to monitor, assess and ultimately improve transportation safety. Big Data can provide valuable information for data driven decision making and enhance the management of the transportation system in real-time by providing actionable information to system users and managers.

"Dr. Khattak encourages me to untangle the complex relationships within 'Big Data' and make more accurate predictions to help people drive more safely, encouraging calmer rather than volatile driving," said Liu.

Khattak said, "Liu's dissertation work will help us find ways of extracting valuable information buried in Big Data."

Liu is the current president of ITE Student Chapter at UT and responsible for organizing ITE student seminars, conferences and community services. His leadership has been recognized by TSITE. Their student chapter has been awarded TSITE Outstanding Student Chapter Award, named Robert E. Stammer, Jr. Student Chapter Award.

"I should credit very much my fellows who contributed to this award, thank the CEE advisors who generously gave their time and advice to help the chapter, and specially thank Southeastern Transportation Center for their generous financial support," said Liu.

Journal Helmed by Dr. Khattak Achieves High Ranking

Posted:8/13/2014

Dr. Asad Khattak is the Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems.

The editors of the Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems (JITS) are pleased to announce that the JITS impact factor is 1.250 for 2013 and the 5-year impact factor is 1.841. Once again, this places JITS as one of the highly ranked journals in the growing field of intelligent transportation systems. Among transportation science and technology journals, it is ranked 16th out of 32, based on 2013 Thomson Reuters, Journal Citation Reports. This result was made possible with the valuable contributions of the editors, authors, and reviewers.

Additional journal metrics available for JITS from the journalmetrics.com website include:

Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) of 1.604 ("Source Normalized Impact per Paper measures contextual citation impact by weighting citations based on the total number of citations in a subject field.")

Impact per Publication (IPP) of 1.436 ("Impact per Publication measures the ratio of citations per article published in the journal.")

SCImago Journal Rank (SJR): 1.125 ("SCImago Journal Rank is a prestige metric based on the idea that not all citations are the same." )

The editors and Taylor & Francis staff are very pleased with the journal's performance. They are working to further increase the visibility and awareness of JITS by posting free links to the top-cited and top-downloaded articles. Note that high impact factors increase the visibility and awareness of journals, driving up usage and journal distribution. All papers appearing in JITS are available online at:
Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems

Bloomberg.com interviewed Chris Cherry, an associate professor in the College of Engineering.s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, for its recent story on some of the safety issues plaguing electronic bicycle use in China.

The article, Carnage on China Roads Shows Dark Side of Electric Bikes, highlights the growing injury rate linked to the use of the bike-as high as 57 percent in one province-and the fact that they are treated like normal bicycles by authorities, meaning no rules pertaining to motor vehicles apply and users aren't required to pass proficiency tests with them.

Add in top speeds of 25 miles per hour and use by close to 200 million people, often in China.s biggest cities, and the article feels you have a recipe for disaster.

"Simply put, e-bikes couple very low costs with very high mobility, making them very attractive," Cherry told Bloomberg.

KNOXVILLE-Hyeonsup Lim, a PhD candidate in the University of Tennessee, Knoxville,
College of Engineering's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering,
has become the first student from UT to win the Intelligent Transportation Society
of Tennessee Scholarship Award and its $2,000 prize.
"I really owe a lot of thanks to the great instructors in CEE," said Lim.
"Dr. Lee Han's support and encouragement and his referral of me were all significant factors in me winning this."

Lim's essay, "The Meaning and Value of ITS in Our Community," was born
out of a bit of introspection on his part.

"Many times I sat and thought to myself, 'I study ITS, but what does that
really mean,'" said Lim. "The big takeaway was that more focus needed to be put
on how data was used, what people did with it, rather than just focusing on the quality or amount of data we got."

Often referred to as big data, the amount of information coming in wasn't just
numerous in and of itself, but often came from multiple sources as well. Finding ways to sort through that, to analyze that for practical results became Lim's goal.

"Dr. Han, my advisor, has encouraged me often to think about the fundamental
purposes and meaning of using those data," said Lim. "Coming at it from that angle was different from the sort of things I was used to doing, so I was thrilled to think about values of everything I do."

Lim, who also holds a Chancellor's Scholarship, works with the Southeastern
Transportation Center in their Major Research Initiatives.
Putting the goals stated in his essay into practice has become a priority, o
ne made more important by advances in technology.

"The smartphone revolution has really brought about rapid changes and developments
in information technology," said Lim. "The boundaries related to services and systems
of ITS are crumbling. The key now is that it is not just simply adapting new technologies,
it's more about how intelligently we use them."

"It's a reminder of the 'intelligent' part of ITS."

For more on the College of Engineering, visit http://engr.utk.edu.

For more on the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, visit http://cee.utk.edu.

For more on the Southeastern Transportation Center, visit http://stc.utk.edu.

TESP Student Jianjiang (J.J.)Yang

Posted:4/14/2014

In just over two years after joining CEE's TESP PhD program, Jianjiang (J.J.)
Yang blossomed in various ways. Last year, J.J. was on UT's 3-member
'Traffic Bowl' team that beat Vanderbilt, Memphis, and Tennessee Tech to
win State Championship. A month later, they beat several schools
including NC State and Clemson to win the Southern District
Championship. With $3,000 awarded for travel, they then went to Boston
for the International Grand Championship beating some top programs
including Penn State to come in 2nd place losing by only 1 point (3,800
to 3,801) to the 1st place winner.

For the TSITE Award paper, J.J. again competed against outstanding
doctoral students from strong programs. His paper is now also accepted
for publication by a leading journal in our field. The findings
reported in that paper help the State of Tennessee take advantage of Big
Data, derived from real-time cell phone information, to meet the Federal
mandate of providing real-time travel time information to the motoring
public.

Faculty and students conduct research not for the purpose of ranking.
But the success of our faculty and students, like J.J.'s case, helps
increase our visibility, enable us to recruit more good students, and
perhaps even move the ranking of our department and our college in some
meaningful ways.

Saturday, March 8th, 2014, College of Engineering(COE) hosted an annual event "Breakfast of Champions" for
50 high school seniors and their parents/guardians. These students have been accepted
to UTK and COE wanted this program to help make sure they attend UTK in the Fall of 2014.

To highlight the research programs at UTK, along with other two COE department labs,
Driving Simulator Lab of TESP at UTK gave these prospective engineering students the chance
to take a turn in the driving simulator. The simulator, established with funding from
UT's College of Engineering, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering,
as well as from the Southeastern Transportation Center, put each student
through a wide variety of weather and road conditions, all under the watchful eye of peers,
parents and faculty at the observation window.

UT transportation program attended the 93nd TRB in Washington, D.C.

Posted:1/31/2014

University of Tennessee Civil and Environmental Engineering faculty and students, together with Center for Transportation
Research (CTR) staff presented research papers at the 2014 TRB Annual Meeting.

UT participates in the 93nd Annual Transportation Research Board (TRB) held in January in Washington,
D.C. The presenters included Dr. Lee Han, Dr. Asad Khattak, Dr. Chris Cherry, Dr. Shashi Nambisan, Dr. Baoshan Huang, Dr.Stephen Richards, Dr. David B. Clarke and several graduate students. UTK faculty, staff and students presented over 20
research papers/posters, reflecting collaborations between various UT entities and other universities.

The TRB Annual Meeting covered all transportation modes, with thousands of presentations on a diverse
set of transportation topics. The TRB 93rd Annual Meeting attracted upward of 11,000 transportation professionals from
around the world to Washington, D.C., in January,
2014 at the Marriott Wardman Park, Omni Shoreham, and Hilton Washington Hotels. UT's Dr. Khattak co-chaired the Advanced Traveler Information
Systems sub-committee meeting. Dr. Shashi Nambisan is president of the Council of University Transportation Centers and hosted the awards banquet this year.

UT faculty, staff, and students presented the following papers and posters on a broad set of transportation planning and operations issues:

1. Pilot Initiative in Iowa for Intern Development and Management Program

UT-led University Transportation Center Establishes Major Research Initiatives

Posted:12/10/2013

The College of Engineering's Center for Transportation Research (CTR) has won a $5.5 million federal
award for the Region 4 University Transportation Center, the Southeastern Transportation Center (STC).
This grant renews the center's national leadership in transportation safety research. STC's operational
structure reflects the consortium's regional, multi-university nature. Directing the consortium are CTR's
Stephen Richards and DeAnna Flinchum. Reginald Souleyrette of the University of Kentucky is the Research Director,
and Steven Jones of the University of Alabama is Technology Transfer Director.

"The consortium's theme is comprehensive transportation safety," said Richards.
"This grant allows us to work proactively to improve the safety of all transportation modes in the Southeast
through a program of research, education, and technology transfer. We have assembled an excellent team of experts
that can cover a wide spectrum of safety issues and deliver implementable safety research. The education mission
is broad and will involve K-12, undergraduate, and graduate students. The Southeast region and the nation as a whole will benefit greatly from the consortium's collective expertise and professional experience."

Although the grant is in early days, STC has already established an ambitious research program to address
comprehensive transportation safety in the Southeast and beyond. The program supports the Secretary of Transportation's
strategic goal to improve public health and safety by reducing transportation related fatalities and injuries.

The STC research agenda addresses key research needs cited in Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century
Act (MAP-21), namely, to improve highway safety and infrastructure integrity. The STC research topics are:

The consortium represents a prestigious group of university based transportation
safety programs. Besides The University of Tennessee, the member institution are the University
of Kentucky, the University of South Florida, the University of Central Florida, the University of Alabama,
the University of Alabama Birmingham, the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, North Carolina A&T State
University, and Clemson University.

US Rep. John Duncan Jr. congratulated UT on winning the grant.
"As a member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee for 26 years in the House of Representatives,
I know the importance of this research," he said. "It will affect every American in the years to come as we
take on the huge challenge of strengthening and modernizing our nation's transportation infrastructure."

Dr. Khattak to serve as Special Advisor CTR's Journal of Safety and Security

Posted:12/03/2013

The Center for Transportation Research (CTR) has named Dr. Asad J. Khattak as Special Advisor to Journal of Transportation Safety & Security, the international peer-reviewed journal established by CTR in 2009. In this capacity, Dr. Khattak will work closely with CTR and the Southeastern Transportation Center (STC) to further the scope and direction of safety related research.
Prior to joining the faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Dr. Khattak collaborated with CTR, participating in its research,
education, and outreach programs, and he has advised on research initiatives for the STC, CTR's US DOT Region 4 University Transportation Center.

Khattak's safety work covers a broad spectrum of topics that relate to automobile, bicycle, and
pedestrian modes as well as incident management and the role of incidents and accidents during evacuations.
His research has contributed directly to development of the work zone procedure in the Highway Safety Manual. In
addition, his research covers innovations related to intelligent transportation systems and sustainable transportation.

Khattak's safety innovations improve data collection and application of analytical methods. Large safety databases often lack accessible crash data on certain high-risk locations such as work zones. Given that little is known about how work zone characteristics influence injury, especially in truck-involved crashes, Dr. Khattak has investigated large truck crashes in work zones using new methods to obtain work zone crash data. His team uses police report narratives to extract new variables that are not available in standard police crash reports. The variables provide new insights into the role of work zone characteristics in safety.

Dr. Khattak has extensive academic publishing experience. He has authored or coauthored 94 scholarly journal articles and is editor of Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems, which is Science Citation Indexed with a five-year impact factor of 1.400. Khattak is Associate Editor of SCI-indexed International Journal of Sustainable Transportation, and he serves on the editorial advisory boards of Transportation Research, Part C, and Analytic Methods in Accident Research.

Before joining the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Khattak was the Frank Batten endowed chair
Professor of Civil Engineering at Old Dominion University. Prior to ODU, Khattak was Professor of Transportation at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, where he developed the Carolina Transportation Program and collaborated with UT's Southeastern Transportation Center (STC).

Dr. Khattak received his Masters and Ph.D. degrees in civil engineering from Northwestern University. He has
been invited to work at University of Oxford in England, the French National Institute for Transport and Safety Research (INRETS), Ajou University in South Korea, and University of Aveiro, Portugal. As a principal- or co-investigator, he has successfully obtained 47 sponsored research and educational projects totaling more than $7.6 million.

2013 Collegiate Traffic Bowl

The three member team met weekly in the months leading up to the TSITE winter meeting in Knoxville. Each team member was assigned a
different transportation resource to study and prepared detailed notes. These notes were taught to other members and expanded upon as
the TSITE meeting approached. A week before the meeting, the UTK ITE student chapter held a mock traffic bowl pitting the three team members
against the rest of the ITE student members. The traffic bowl team had a resounding victory and was ready for the competition at TSITE.
Four teams competed, University of Tennessee Knoxville, Tennessee State University, Vanderbilt University and University of Memphis.
University of Tennessee was the winner for 2013 TSITE Traffic Bowl.

Following the victory at TSITE, the team began preparing for the competition at the SDITE meeting in Charlotte,
NC. Team members met twice a week and students and professors would quiz team members at random, helping to keep them prepared.
Nine teams competed, Clemson University, Mississippi State University, Auburn University, North Carolina State University,
University of Kentucky, Virginia Tech, Southern Polytech State University, University of Louisiana and University of Tennessee.
University of Tennessee was the championship for 2013 SDITE Traffic Bowl.

FIn August, UTK traffic bowl team headed to Boston, MA for the ITE International Collegiate Traffic Bowl. Nine teams competed,
Texas A & M University, Iowa State University, University of Florida, Penn State University, University of Masschusetts-Amherst,
Brigham Young University, Wayne State University, University of Tennessee-Knoxville, University of Manitoba.
University of Tennessee was in the Group 3 for preliminary matches. UT was the Group 3 winner and then faced other two group winners for the
Championship match. Other two groups winners were University of Florida and Penn State University. Finally, UT group missed the Championship by a single point,
and got the Second Place in 2013 ITE International Collegiate Traffic Bowl.

2013 TRB Annual Meeting

The UT Knoxville transportation engineering faculty and students went to
Washington DC to attend the 92nd Transportation Research Board (TRB) annual
meeting which was held during January 2013. We rented a few vans to drive
together from Knoxville to DC. During the conference, student members attend
exhibits, presentation sessions, poster sessions and committee meetings that are
closely associated with their study concentration. Six chapter members, listed
below, presented their research in either poster sessions, committee meetings
and lecture sessions. TRB continues to serve as a great opportunity to showcase
our research and network with international peers in the transportation field.